It’s Hell Getting Old!

I can remember my Dad saying “It’s hell getting old.” as he rubbed some part of his arm, leg, or back that was hurting.  I also remember when Anne Richards was governor and he said “You know you’re getting old when you think something like that looks pretty good.”  He was full of the one liners and wise cracks.  Never hesitating to make himself the butt of the joke.

But honestly, it is hell getting old.  I was watching television and a new Life Alert commercial came on.  You know the one, “Help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”  Well in this new commercial the lady laying on the floor on her stomach, looking sadly into the camera looks to be about my age.  Now granted when they cut to the “customer” who actually tells her story, that women looks about 10 or 15 years older than me.  But at the beginning of the commercial, that could very well be me.  Add also the fact that I very well could fall and not get up.  I am a clutz of the greatest magnitude.  I once fell in the 7th or 8th grade and broke my shoulder.  What was I doing?  I was sitting on the ground, stood up, and promptly fell back down.  Lucky for me, at this point I still have Doug.  He watches me like a hawk when I go up or down stairs and is ready to catch me or help me up.  There is another problem with that Life Alert product. You have to remember you have it.  A man in my Mom’s church who is in his early 90’s fell at home and laid on the floor for almost two days before someone found him.  He had the Life Alert around his neck, but he forgot about it. <sigh> That’s probably what I would do.

I wake up with all kinds of aches and pains in my joints and back.  Although, buying a new mattress has helped with a large part of those.  Even having a conversation about a new mattress and how it has helped my aches and pains indicates that I am aging.  Doug is four years older than me and he told me once that once he hit fifty everything seems to have gone down hill, physically anyway.  At six months into the age of 50 I have to agree with him.

A few years back I had my right rotator cuff repaired.  I tore it when I flipped a four-wheeler a few years before.  Even after surgery, some days it still hurts.  Along with my right hip, knee, and ankle, all of which were battered on that short four-wheeler ride.  Sometimes my lower back really hurts, but I think that’s just from living.  I take my calcium, I don’t want to be stooped like my grandmother was.  But I see my mother stooping now, and I know that I’m probably not too far behind her.

I know in my head that I could halt a lot of this aging in my body by simply adding some kind of exercise program into my day.  But the problem is where to add this program.  I spend 70 minutes driving to work in the morning and another 70 minutes driving home.  Too bad we don’t have teleporters.  If I had a teleporter I would have an extra two hours and twenty minutes each day.  That would be plenty of time to add an exercise program.

Sadly, I don’t think teleporters are coming any time soon.  So maybe I just need to get my lazy butt up a little earlier in the morning.  What I’ve learned about myself is that I am a piddler and a time waster from way back.  This is a habit that I have found hard to break.  But break it I will try to do.  I’ve got a treadmill.  Doug has one room with a weight machine in it.  He at least does that, although he needs to add some cardio to his program as well.  But I don’t think he will be taking advice from a piddler and time waster of such proportions as I.

This machine we call our body, does require some attention from time to time.  Just like a car that you sit out in the drive and neglect.  Just as it begins to deteriorate so does our body from lack of exercise and deficiency of quality fuel.  I have gotten better at the “fuel” part.  That takes effort as well, but I’ve enjoyed that and the fact that I do feel better once the fast food, artificial sweetners, and the other chemicals have been basically eliminated from my diet.  We do try to eat better.  Not to say that we are perfect, we splurge every now and then.  But 99.9% of the time we do try.

I didn’t start out on this rant of mine to complain.  Honestly!  It’s just a cold hard fact of life.  In fact, what got me thinking about all of this was this short conversation with Doug.

Me:  “I don’t know why my feet and ankles are aching so much?”

Doug:  “It’s probably all that extra weight you’re carrying around.”

He didn’t say it to be ugly.  Doug just answered my question honestly.  And I must say after seeing the group photo that my boss took for our company’s 60th anniversay, I must concur.